Spitz, David. “Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: A Reinterpretation.” Midwest Journal of Political Science 4, no. 1 (1960).

First Paragraph: ” I shall venture in this paper to suggest three things:  (1) that, despite the near-universal acceptance of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis as an unfinished fragment, it is in face a finished work or, more strictly-as Professor Howard B. White has argued-a work of deliberate incompleteness, which in this case amounts to the same thing; (2) that the figure of the merchant Jew, who, so far as I know, is practically ignored in the literature of the New Atlantis, is in fact of crucial importance; for he is, I believe, the Socratic philosopher, though not necessarily Socrates himself; and (3) that the function of the philosopher in this, Bacon’s major political work, is threefold: to emphasize the distinction between religion and philosophy; to demonstrate, or at least to assert, the superiority of the latter to the former; and to serve as the necessary link or bridge between religion, Which Bacon here holds to be the lowest or most elemental principle of human association, and science, the highest or most rational form of human activity.”

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